


Allison Argent, Avenger

by ebjameston



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Teen Wolf (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:13:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebjameston/pseuds/ebjameston
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And that’s how Allison winds up on what is more or less a coffee date with the Winter Solider, who looks across the cramped Starbucks table at her with bright blue eyes and says, “I know eighteen ways to kill someone with a spoon, but I can’t remember anything from ages nine to twelve.”</p><p> Allison says, “Same.”</p><p> </p><p>***<br/>The Avengers need a substitute archer while Hawkeye's on Loki-screwed-with-your-brain parole. Luckily, Coulson has someone in mind - even more luckily, that someone died a few years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Allison Argent, Avenger

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't watched Agents of SHIELD, GH.325 is a drug derived from alien DNA used to bring people back to life - but to avoid going insane, all of your memories have to be erased.

[1]

“I’ll be field-ready in _six months_ ,” Clint protests, doggedly following Coulson through the halls. “ _Six months_ , and I’ll be back. SHIELD doesn’t even technically _exist_ anymore, how many missions can you _possibly_ send the Avengers on in the next _six months_?”

“I don’t know,” Coulson says brightly, “But then again, I don’t control when aliens invade. When duty calls, Agent Barton. And SHIELD _does_ exist, we’re just…rebooting.” 

Clint allows Coulson to shepherd him into the elevator with a scowl and flicks off his hearing aids, as he always has to when passing the R&D floors – damn engineers with their ultra-sonic something-emitter beams or whatever the hell Banner’s got them working on.

“Six months,” he repeats, signing and speaking. It’s reflex to sign when his hearing aids are off – falling back on his hands when he can’t be certain his voice is doing what he wants it to do. He petulantly enjoys the frown of concentration that comes over Coulson’s face as he focuses on Clint’s fingers. “It’s a waste to train an entire new agent to cover six months.”

Coulson’s frown deepens, and Clint mostly ignores his atrocious-but-steadily-improving signing in favor of reading the director’s lips when he responds, “Does that mean you want your team out in the field without a long-distance shooter to cover them in the interim?”

Clint flips his hearing aids back on as the elevator doors glide open and they step out into Medical. Coulson, the only one of them who actually knows where they’re going, walks quickly through the honeycomb of exam rooms and longer-term, hospital-style areas.

“Of course I don’t want that,” Clint says. “But it’s only six months.”

“I don’t know what you’re so upset about,” Coulson says, stopping abruptly in front of a room with three numeric keypads and a biometrics scanner. “You picked her out yourself.”

“What?”

“You chose her,” Coulson says, typing in a ten-digit string. “Don’t you remember? Five years ago, Agent Stark found you watching YouTube videos of some of the junior archers that were Olympics-bound, and you pointed at one of them and said ‘Her. Give her a few years, and she’ll be a better marksman than me.’”

“Coulson,” Clint says slowly, memorizing the second set of digits, “Are you trying to tell me that you kidnapped a teenage girl because I told Stark that she had good aim _half a decade_ ago?”

“’Kidnapped’ is such an ugly word,” Coulson says, inputting the last passcode. “Stark started tracking her as a sort of backup, and when she got herself into a bit of trouble, we – ah – stepped in.”

“’A bit of trouble,’” Clint repeats. “Meaning…?" 

“She died,” Coulson says matter-of-factly, holding his eye open for the retinal scan. “We’ve been keeping her in stasis while the GH.327 did its work, but she should be ready to go.”

The doors beeps and swings open slightly; Clint hooks the handle with a finger before it can travel more than a few inches. “Hold on. GH.327 – I thought it was 325?”

 “Oh, it was,” Coulson says. “That’s what Skye and I have circulating. Simmons starting tinkering with the compound almost immediately to see if she could reduce the negative side effects. It made sense to follow the numbering system.”

 “What happened to 326?”

 Coulson fixes him with a cold stare and pushes his hand away from the door. “Don’t _ever_ ask about 326.”

  

[2]

 It’s cold, and then it’s dark, and then it hurts, and then she wakes up.

 Someone with bright red hair smiles down at her and says, “Tell me about your pain, Miss Argent,” and she thinks, _Mom?_

A man in a suit sits next to her hospital bed and says, “I’d like to talk to you about the Avengers initiative.”

 He comes back with another man dressed all in black, a bow slung across his chest, and Allison thinks, _I’m supposed to have one of those_.

 

 

[3]

 “Tell me why I can’t remember,” she says, dragging her IV pole next to her and forcing her legs to cooperate.

 “It’s complicated,” the archer, Clint Barton, Hawkeye, replies. Some foggy part of Allison’s brain that she can’t quite access wants her to freak out over the fact that she’s engaged in casual conversation with an honest-to-God _Avenger,_ but like most things these days, it’s not defined enough to act on. He holds open the elevator door and hoists her IV over the break between Medical tile and elevator carpet. “They did tell you that you died, right? Shit, I’m not sure if – if they didn’t tell you that, I didn’t tell you that. I mean –.”

 “It’s fine,” Allison says. “They told me. Sharp force trauma to the chest. I’ve got a fucking nightmare of a scar.”

 “You should see what I’ve got from Helsinki,” Barton says, fiddling with his hearing aids as they descend. When the door opens on whatever floor H2 is, he ushers her out into a room that’s all windows on one side and massive timeline on the other.

 She totters forward, hating feeling so disconnected from her body, hating how _wrong_ it feels to not be able to run and kick and jump. “What is this?”

 “Everything we know about what’s going on in the world,” Barton says, bounding easily to the far end of the room. “It automatically filters out information you’re not allowed to see based on clearance level, so we’re looking at everything Level 6 and below. Our story begins with HYDRA, Nazis, and Captain America.”

 Allison makes it to the wall and trails her fingers over the display, startling when the monitor responds to her touch and pops extra details up for her perusal. “I remember this,” she says slowly, left hand on the Battle of New York and right hand on Project Insight/Fall of SHIELD. “I remember watching it on TV and reading about it online. The Avengers, the helicarriers crashing. How can I remember all of this, but not remember anything about my life other than my name?”

 Barton hops up onto a table and sits with his knees bent, ready to spring in any direction. “I know Coulson explained this to you. The drug they used to bring you back – the side effect is a total memory wipe.”

 “That doesn’t make sense,” she says, angry at how much her voice shakes. “I can remember how to drive a car, how to clean and reassemble any of six types of sniper rifle in less than two minutes, how to hem a fucking skirt, but I can’t remember my parents’ faces, and they’ve _got_ to be the ones who taught me to do all that.”

 Barton produces an arrow from somewhere and runs his fingers repeatedly over the fletching. Allison’s fingers twitch. “Like I said,” he says carefully. “It’s complicated.”

  

[4]

 The fire of the string against her fingers and forearm feels like coming home.

 It also fucking _sucks_ that her calluses faded while she was in stasis, and she tells Barton this loudly when they have to stop in the middle of a training session because she’s bleeding all over the equipment.

 “Hold still,” he gripes, pinning her wrist between his knees. “I can’t do anything with you squirming around like that.”

 “You’re literally peeling my skin off,” she points out, then looks away while he messes with the piece of skin dangling from her index finger. Eight days awake (alive?), and she can run a mile (barely), flip through the first level of the obstacle course (kind of), and hit a moving target (better). She pushes herself harder than she should, but the second she stops moving she becomes horribly, painfully aware of how much she doesn’t know – how empty she feels – so she runs further, ducks faster, shoots straighter.

 Barton watches her struggle dispassionately, but forces her to stop when she’s bleeding or otherwise injured. He taunts and yells and uses sarcasm like a weapon, but patiently calms her down when she freaks out after Coulson tells her that remembering her old life before she’s ready might kill her.

 He reminds her of someone. But she doesn’t have a face or a name or a story to associate with the memory, so she tries to put it out of her mind.  

  

[5]

 “She’s just a kid,” Steve says, watching the girl move slowly through a combat sequence on the training mats. She consistently mirrors Clint’s demonstration, and only needs to be shown a combination once before she can execute it perfectly. She’s not recognizable as the girl who staggered out of a hospital bed three weeks ago.

 “She’s older than I was when I started,” Natasha says. She nods approval as the girl repeats the sequence at full speed, ending with a shoulder roll into a crouch with a drawn bow. The arrow lodges just left of center on the target, 50 yards away.

 “And look how _you_ ended up,” Steve deadpans, mostly to get under Natasha’s skin. Across the floor, Clint berates Allison for the half-inch error, and she responds by sweeping his feet out from under him. 

 “It’s just until Clint’s cleared for fieldwork,” Dr. Banner says. “Six months, tops. We need to be one hundred percent certain that Loki’s compulsion didn’t have lasting effects.”

 “Hawkeye’s fine,” Natasha growls. Tension sings in the lines of her body as it always does whenever someone mentions the few weeks Clint spent off the reservation. Steve drops a hand on her shoulder, trying to convey support and faith and loyalty through the simple touch.

 “I’m sure he will be,” Dr. Banner agrees. “But Director Coulson’s right – we can’t go on missions without distance cover. It’s dangerous.”

 “But she’s just a _kid_ ,” Steve says.  “A kid without any memories of who she was before.”

 Natasha shrugs, the motion jostling Steve’s hand. “Memories are messy. Emotional. She might be better off without them. And Coulson says that if he just tells her about her life before, it’ll overload the rewiring the GH.327 did and she’ll break. She has to remember on her own, or not at all.”

 Steve thinks about Bucky. The vacant look in his eye on the bridge. The confusion and anger on the helicarrier. The sadness and frustration when he shows up at Steve’s apartment after thrice-weekly therapy sessions, asking if this specific memory or that one is real, asking for confirmation of his own existence.

 The girl rolls and shoots again, and this time the arrow hits home.

  

[6]

  **Phil Coulson (2:51AM)** Get to base. Priority 2. 

 Clint scrambles to respond to the text, fumbling for his shoes in the darkness and nearly stepping on Lucky in the process. It takes three minutes to run the new SHIELD base from his apartment, and he skids to a halt outside the little bedroom/bunk Allison’s been living in at exactly 2:55. He can hear the screaming through the door, although it’s distorted because he must have grabbed old hearing aids in his rush to get here.

 Coulson looks at him, grim. “This is the worst it’s been.”

 “This has happened _before_?”

 “Every night,” Coulson says. “She usually wakes herself up after a few minutes. This has been going on for almost half an hour.”

 Clint bulls into the room without waiting for an actual order. Every muscle in Allison’s body is taut, the sheets tangled in her legs and arms, her eyes squeezed shut against whatever’s going on in her head. He has to pin her down and shout to wake her up, and then she just balls herself up in a corner and stares into space until morning.

 He starts sleeping in the room next to hers.

 They don’t talk about it.

  

[7]

 The call comes in four and a half weeks after Allison comes back to life. The comms unit that’s pretty much always in her ear crackles and summons her to the roof, where a helicopter takes her and Barton and Captain Call-me-Steve Rogers to a private airfield. Natasha gives an aborted half-wave from the cockpit of the jet that’s waiting, Tony Stark is flying lazy figure eights around one of the jet’s wings to warm up, and Sam Wilson shouts something that definitely might be “Get in, losers, we’re going shopping!” from the loading dock.

 “I’ll be on comms the whole time,” Barton shouts, sharply tugging the straps of her pack into place. The roar from the jet is loud enough that Allison can only hear him through the in-ear piece. “It should be simple – Banner’s staying back at base and Coulson didn’t even ask Thor to come over. The Argentinian coast guard’s on call if you guys run into any problems.”

 “I’ll be fine, _Dad_ ,” She shouts, flashing the OK symbol and then touching her thumb to her forehead.

 Barton flashes her a grin, all teeth and concern, then shoves her in the direction of the jet.

 

***

  _Simple_ , Allison learns, is SHIELD code for _alien monsters the size of those elephants in Lord of the Rings crawling out of the sea to terrorize the Argentinian coastline._ They apparently breathe CO2 and exhale pure oxygen, so Banner’s shouting in her ear to keep at least one alive so they can study it, but all Allison’s really trying to do is keep herself and her team alive because these things also have talons and studded tails and are really, _really_ fucking fast. She’s perched on one of the last standing buildings in Mar del Plata, calling out patterns of movement for the others to head off, firing arrow after arrow. When her quiver’s empty, there are still half a dozen aliens wreaking havoc, so she goes to ground and starks tracking down her spent arrows using the experimental homing tech Stark’s been playing with.

 “What are you doing, Argent?” Barton demands in her ear. She can practically see the face he’s making – consternation tinged with pride, like when she backflipped off the rock wall she’d been free climbing just to prove that she could.

 “Six of them, five of us,” she says, setting her boot against a dead monster’s side to reclaim two arrows.

 “Thor’s coming across the Bifrost as quickly as he can, and the coast guard –.”

 “The coast guard will get slaughtered,” Natasha cuts in, breathing heavily. “Argent, Cap’s got three of them seven blocks south of your location.”

 “On it,” Allison says. She runs steadily down the abandoned streets, skirting bodies of humans and aliens alike, snatching up arrows whenever her tech beeps that one’s nearby. It’s eerily quiet, with the exception of the occasional explosion or bellowing alien shriek. The chatter over comms seems to almost fade into white noise – just Stark saying that he took down two more, Sam affirming that his is dead, Natasha saying the same. Coulson is doing that thing that’s not-quite-yelling at the guys who provided the intel that this would be a quick, quiet job. It’s all just background to Allison, feet beating a steady one-two against the ground, breath echoing off ruined buildings, bow half-drawn, and she wonders why, _why_ this all feels so familiar. Not the alien bit – that’s definitely new – but the rest of it, the combat and the team aspect and the monster hunting. She _knows_ this, she’s _done_ this, it’s etched into her bones.

 Who the hell _was_ Allison Argent before she died?

 Captain Rogers has one dead alien and is locked in battle with the remaining two when Allison reaches him, and she knows she’s got to get higher ground to be any help – these things are too heavily armored from below.

 “Just one alive, guys, please,” Dr. Banner repeats. “We could be looking at restoring the ozone here.”

 A voice in Allison’s head that she recognizes but can’t place says, _Well, Ally A, if you’re fighting a_ _mû_ _mak, you might as well pull a Legolas._

She squints up at the creature Captain Rogers isn’t actively engaged with, wondering how likely it is that this plan will get her killed (again). Stark drops out of the sky and lands next to her, following her line of sight. “What’re you thinking about doing, Katniss?”

 “Don’t encourage her, Stark,” Hawkeye says. “I’ll get Thor to kick your ass again –.”

 Allison ducks her head and one shoulder through her bow. “Give me a lift?” She can’t see his face through the mask, but she imagines a grin as his metal-encased hands clamp her at the hip and back of the neck. It’s a ten-second flight that leaves her stomach rolling, but she lands steady on the alien’s back and waves Stark off to help Captain Rogers. Barton keeps up a steady stream of threats against her person while she carefully treads the length of what serves as the creature’s spine, stopping at what she thinks is the base of the neck, and from there it’s a simple matter of flipping every arrow she’d gathered to the tranquilizer setting and jamming them down between gaps in the armor.

 

***

 “She did good,” Natasha says after Clint sends Allison stumbling off to bed. “You should be proud.”

 “Seconded,” Tony says. “Can we keep Lady Hawk, Coulson? Please?”

 “This isn’t a long-term arrangement,” Coulson says, flicking through damage reports submitted by the Argentina branch. “Miss Argent is only active until Agent Barton is cleared. Don’t get attached.”

  

[8]

 “No one’s actually told me why I’m doing this,” Allison says, dodging Barton’s jab and follow-up hook.

 “You have to learn to fight at close quarters,” he says. “Arrows run out. You get ambushed. Stranded.”

 “No, not that.” She tries a combo that ends in a knee kick; he catches her leg and jerks her off balance. “Shit, sorry, that was terrible. I mean the whole thing – I know I’m filling in for you, but no one’s actually told me why you’re sidelined.”

 Barton nudges at her feet with his shoe. “Keep moving. I’m being monitored by Psych.”

 “Why? I’m the one with screaming nightmares. You seem pretty stable to me.”

 He holds up a glove to pause their spar. “You remember Loki? The Asgardian? Destroyed New York a few years back?”

 “Thor’s brother.” Allison snatches a water bottle and tosses it across the mat to him, folding herself to the ground to rest in the same motion.

 “Adopted, but yeah. He had a magic scepter thing and could control people using it. I did a lot of bad shit. A lot of things I regret. People died.” Something dark clouds Barton’s face while he speaks, and his hands throw signs Allison can’t track.

 The story twinges at something in Allison’s brain. “I think…I think I did that, too. Bad things, I mean. Things I regretted.”

 Barton shoots her a look. “You remembering, Argent?”

 Allison chases the feeling, hoping that it turns into an actual memory, but it flickers and fades before it can materialize. “No. Still a blank slate.”

 Barton pulls her to her feet. “Might not be a bad thing in this case.”

 

[9]

 She meets Thor via intergalactic Skype. He shouts so loudly that it shorts out the speakers on her laptop.

  

[10]

 It becomes routine. Wake up, breakfast, weapons and combat training with some combination of Barton, Natasha, Sam, and/or Captain Rogers. Shower, lunch, tactics and parameters training with some combination of Natasha, Captain Rogers, Dr. Banner, and/or Director Coulson. Free time, dinner, tech training with some combination of Natasha, Dr. Banner, and/or Stark. Then she usually wanders the base aimlessly, unable to sit still and relax, unable to shake the feeling that she’s _missing_ something that she desperately needs to find. Lights out by ten, and she stares at the ceiling, fingers running across the vertical scar between her ribs, wondering who she was and who she is.

 The monotony is broken up by assignments. It’s all pretty small-scale compared to the Battle of New York, but she’s with the Avengers fairly regularly and Coulson occasionally loans her out to other, less high-profile teams. She meets a hacker named Skye, an engineer named Fitz, a biochemist named Simmons. She does as ordered, finding makeshift blinds and nests, shooting increasingly high-tech arrows at enemies, calling out patterns. On the days after missions, tactics and parameters training is replaced by film review with Barton, who watches all the footage from the camera on her vest and offers critiques.

 At some point, she stops thinking of him as Barton. The first time she calls him Clint, he makes her go to Medical to get her head checked.

  

[11]

 “I didn’t finish high school,” Allison says suddenly, talking as much to the oatmeal she’s supposed to be eating as she is to anyone else in the room.

 “You’re remembering?” Bruce asks. He watches her carefully, looking for signs of distress. As always, her frame is preternaturally still, a study in barely-contained power and danger. She reminds Bruce of himself more than he’d like to admit: the forced calm exterior designed to mask and contain.

 “No,” she says. There’s pain and frustration behind the simple word, but nothing overly concerning. “Just – I’m nineteen. You and Director Coulson said that I was in stasis for a year and a half. So, I died when I was seventeen. November. I didn’t finish high school.”

 Sam, the only other person in the full kitchen that Tony insisted on having installed in Phil’s new SHIELD base, hums into his coffee. “You should probably get on that. Can’t do much without a high school diploma.”

 Allison laughs, but there’s absolutely no humor behind it. “Why? Allison Argent doesn’t exist. What am _I_ going to do with a high school diploma?”

 Bruce drops a note to Allison’s assigned therapist, who politely informs him that Allison stopped attending sessions a month ago.

 Bruce tells Phil, who tells Allison that she’s benched until she returns to therapy.

 Two weeks later, Allison passes her GED test. Bruce finds the certificate, under the name _Alyssa Williams_ , in the garbage.

  

[12]

 In mid-October, Clint wakes Allison up with a cupcake.

 (Well, technically he wakes her up by lobbing a pillow at her from across the room, waiting until she reflexively slashes it to bits using the knife from under her mattress, and _then_ presenting her with a cupcake.)

 “What’s going on?” She asks sleepily, pieces of pillow fluff floating into her hair. “Mission?”

 “No, kiddo,” Clint says, pressing the cupcake into her hands. “It’s your birthday. According to Coulson.”

 However Clint was expecting Allison to react, her face shuttering into the emotionless mask that he’s now all too familiar with isn’t it. “Oh,” she says. She carefully sets the frosted confection on her little metal bedside table. “Okay. Thanks.”

 “What’s up?” He asks, crouching to be on her level.

 “No, it’s nothing,” she says, faking a smile that looks painful even by Clint’s standards. “It’s just – this is stupid – it’s not _really_ my birthday, is it? Do you get to keep celebrating the same day after you’ve, you know, died? I was legally dead for four days, and then in stasis for a year and a half. So am I actually twenty today, or am I twenty-minus-four-days?”

 Her hands flit as she talks, getting almost all the signs right. He gently corrects her finger placement for the word _legal_. “I’m not in the zombie club, so I don’t think I get to have an opinion on that.”

 She studies how he’s configured her hand, shakes it out, then forms the sign a few more times to lock it in to muscle memory. “Well. Does my possibly inaccurate birthday at least get me out of training?”

 “Not a chance,” he says. “But Thor’s dropping in for dinner and we’ll watch one of those terrible French movies you like.”

She gets up and moves to her dresser, pulling out a clean tanktop and changing in front of him because there’s no point pretending they haven’t seen each other naked dozens of times – hazards of a shared locker room and a memorable mission involving aliens that exude corrosive gas. “I feel like I should be celebrating my first birthday. Or maybe my five month-iversary. Since I don’t remember any of my other birthdays.”

Clint watches the lines of her back as she rolls the shirt down, covering three inches of ropy scar next to her spine. “I stopped celebrating my birthday when I joined the circus. Just sort of lost track of it for awhile.”

 

***

 "Happy birthday to me, aliens are possessing the fucking _trees_ ,” Allison sings to herself over the comms, the sound of her bowstring slapping rhythmically, and Clint has to cover his mic with his hand while he laughs.

 

***

 “What are you doing here?” Clint asks, stepping back to admit Allison to his apartment. “Are you even allowed off base by yourself?”

 “Day pass from the director,” Allison says, kicking off her boots. “Well, night pass, I guess. For my birthday.”

 “Cool. What do you want to do? There’s a bar just down the street, but I figured you’d be pretty beat after an unexpected mission in which you almost got killed by shrubbery.” When Clint turns around from locking the door, Allison is standing two feet away in her bra and panties, tracking his every motion the way she does when they’re sparring.

 “Allison,” he begins, but she closes the distance between them before he can get the rest of that sentence formulated.

 “I want to remember what it’s like,” she says, and guides his hand between her legs.

 

[13]

 Coulson brings everyone in for a meeting at five in the morning and plays them footage compiled from a few campers’ cell phones. Allison recognizes the predatory stance and the growl within seconds, but lets the video run until the creature’s eyes flash a brilliant red and the entire screen flares out.

 “Well?” Coulson asks, bringing the lights back up. “Any ideas? Our analysts are stumped.”

 “You said this is from Oregon?” Allison asks before any of the others can speak up. “The eastern side of the state? Pack territories out there are really unstable, so the first thing we need is a map with current boundaries so we can get in touch with the local Alphas. If we’re looking at a rogue, they’ll probably want to handle it themselves – werewolves like to keep things internal when they can. If that’s an Alpha with an established pack, it’ll be more complicated.”

 “I’m sorry,” Clint says into the dead silence that follows. “Did you say ‘werewolves?’” He fingerspells W-E-R-E-W-O-L-V-E-S, looking between Natasha and Allison for confirmation.

 “Yeah,” Allison says distractedly, backtracking the video thirty seconds or so – she wants to see that kill strategy again, start familiarizing herself with the wolf’s patterns. “Assuming his pack will back him, which they almost definitely will, we’ll need to know a lot more about their makeup before going in.”

 “She _is_ saying ‘werewolves,’ right?” Clint asks again, incredulity creeping into his voice. “Stark is going to be _so pissed_ that he wasn’t here for this.”

 

***

 Steve finds her in the practice range several hours later, driving arrow after arrow into a Chitauri dummy. He politely waits until her quiver empties, then follows her when she stalks out into the range to yank the arrows free one by one.

 “Miss Argent,” he says, extracting a particularly deep headshot and handing it to her, “I understand your frustration –.”

 “Bullshit,” she spits, taking the arrow from him roughly. “I’m sorry, Captain, but _bullshit_. Do you have any idea how _insane_ I feel? I know things that I can’t possibly know, and it’s been five and a half goddamnmonths and I still can’t remember _anything_ about who I was, but I was apparently a hunter of creatures that this team – _this_ team, which includes a Norse god – thought were mythical.”

 “I have a friend you should meet,” Steve says.

 

***

 And that’s how Allison winds up on what is more or less a coffee date with the Winter Solider, who looks across the cramped Starbucks table at her with bright blue eyes and says, “I know eighteen ways to kill someone with a spoon, but I can’t remember anything from ages nine to twelve.”

 Allison says, “Same.”

 

[14]

 “I’ve said this before,” Coulson says. “Miss Argent is only active until Agent Barton is cleared by Psych and Medical – that’s two weeks from now, if everything stays on track.”

 “What happens after that?” Tony asks, and the room falls silent. “What’s going to happen to Hawkette?”

 “She’s a SHIELD asset,” Coulson says. “We will utilize her as best we can.”

 “What exactly does that mean, Director?” Steve asks, and bile rises in Clint’s throat at the look that crosses Coulson’s face. How has he not thought to ask about this before? How have _none_ of them thought to ask what will happen to Allison once he’s back on the team?

 Coulson sighs. “There’s a better way to do this, but I’m too tired to care about protocol at the moment. We’ve reverse engineered the technology HYDRA used to bring the Winter Soldier in and out of stasis.”

 Everyone reacts at once, meaning everyone stares at Coulson with some strain of anger or disbelief or disgust.

 Steve, maybe not surprisingly, is the first to speak. “You can’t do that to her. You saw what it – it _destroyed_ Bucky. You can’t do that to Allison.”

 “I’m not talking about bouncing her in and out for a few weeks every decade,” Coulson says. “But she’s too talented to waste, and once Agent Barton is cleared, this team won’t need her anymore. We’ll hold her until we need her again. A permanent, one-time shift ten or twenty years in the future.”

“When duty calls, right, Coulson?” Clint says, and the words are cold on his tongue.

  

[15]

 Allison, as she does when her blocked-off, inaccessible brain fails her, takes to the internet. She gave up Googling herself a long time ago, after Dr. Banner explained that forcing her neural pathways to reconnect prematurely could be fatal (and then she _actually_ stopped after the first half-dozen attempts proved futile, thanks to a complete records wipe courtesy of SHIELD I.T.), so she just starts at the Wikipedia page for werewolves and works her way through the references.

 Thirty-one hours, infinite cups of coffee, and one strangely intimate visit from Clint later, she’s waiting on a response to a private message she sent to the moderator of the forum that most matches the information she has in her head – a forum she had to go through six other sites, reroute her IP address according to coded specifications, answer a series of alternating riddles and advanced calculus questions, and then call Skye to talk her through a complicated hack to get into.

 “I’m considering failing my next Psych eval,” Clint says, pressing a kiss to the long scar between her ribs.

 She uses the fingers threaded through his hair to force him to look up at her. “What? Why?”

 “If I’m cleared, you’re off the team,” he says simply.

 “That’s the whole point,” she says, laughing a little. “For you to come back. They’re _your_ team. I’m just the substitute. The poor man’s Clint Barton.”

 He props himself up on his elbows and traces patterns on her ribs. “What about you, though?”

 "I was thinking about joining the circus,” she says, then blushes when he drops a hand to between her legs and does something that makes her yelp. “Okay, okay, I take it back! I don’t know – join another team? Maybe go to college?”

 “You should talk to Coulson about it.” Clint brings both his hands into view again and laces them across her stomach, looking at her seriously.

 “Yeah, maybe,” she says, trailing a hand down her own body to join up with his. She stops and visits all the scars she finds along the way, knowing by heart which ones she remembers getting and which ones are from before. At one point, she must have been perfectly unblemished, smooth skin and smooth hands, but now she’s all callouses and scars and healed broken bones. She matches Clint, the same blistered fingers and rough patch along the inner forearm.

 “Not maybe,” he says. “You need to talk to him.”

 She frowns and is on the verge of responding when her laptop dings. She rolls out from under him to snag it, and when she returns he’s shifted so she can lean against his chest and balance the computer on her knees.

  **mccallmeemissary (7:04PM PST):** You a hunter? Sounds like a lone Alpha to me, but the Oregon packs are pretty loosey-goosey anyway so it’s hard to say. Is he biting people to turn them, or straight-up killing everyone? I’ve got a couple contacts in the area, and my pack’s just a few hours away – want me to see if someone can swing by and give it the ole snifferoo? Any chance you could send that video my way, too? Might go a long way toward convincing my Alpha and second.

 “What do you think?” Allison asks, already typing out a response. “Chances Coulson will let me send a classified video to an unknown contact on a website that’s almost as heavily shielded than the actual SHIELD mainframe?”

 Clint just snorts into her hair, so she finishes her message and hits send.

  **aardvark1016 (10:11PM EST):** I’m not a hunter, just part of a team with a vested interest in keeping people safe. No go on the video, unfortunately; my team leader’s not big into sharing. From what I’ve heard, no one’s been turned, but the body count’s at 16 and rising with the full moon this weekend. My team’s thinking about heading out on Thursday to get some boots on the ground – if your pack or your contacts get you any information about what we’re walking into, I’d owe you one. Thanks!

 She shuts the laptop and slides it under the bed while Clint laughs himself to sleep about aardvarks.

 

[16]

 She wakes up screaming, a blade plunging through her chest, trying to hold herself together with fingers made slippery by blood. It hurts until it doesn’t, and Clint run his fingers through her sweat-soaked hair whispering, “I’m sorry, you’re safe, I’m sorry, you’ll be okay.”

 

[17]

 “You should talk to Coulson again,” Natasha says, glancing over at Steve in the co-pilot’s chair. He’d said he wanted to learn to fly, but so far he mostly just stares at all the instruments on the quinjet’s control panel with a skeptical look on his face.

 “About what?”

 Natasha jerks her head toward the back of the jet, where Sam and Stark are playing cards and Allison’s stretched out on the floor with her iPod on her chest, signing along to whatever she’s listening to. Natasha doesn’t completely approve of Clint’s relationship with Allison, but she’ll grant that the girl seems dedicated to becoming fluent in ASL. “Argent.”

 “I’ve tried talking to him,” Steve says. “He’s not budging. He says it’s an issue of resource allocation.”

 Natasha checks their heading and makes a minor course correction. “She didn’t ask for any of this. She’s barely settled in with our team – who knows how she’ll react if Coulson sends her to sleep again and she wakes up fifteen years in the future?”

 “Are you concerned about the girl, Agent Barton’s feelings for the girl, or how much this feels like we’re becoming HYDRA?”

 Natasha doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to.

 

[18]

 “Here,” Allison says. She uses her free hand to trace the claw marks that spread wider than her fingers. “He’s trying to mark territory, since he’s alone and doesn’t have any of his own.”

 “Found another one over here,” Natasha calls from the other side of the little clearing. “Does this mean he’s close by?”

 “Probably,” Allison says, pulling her phone out and thumbing through recent messages from mccallmeemissary. “My contact says the two local packs will be out in force tomorrow for the full moon, looking to hunt the rogue down. They’ll probably be able to handle it with no assistance from us.” She snaps a quick picture and sends it along.

 “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done,” Stark announces, landing in the center of the clearing. “A _werewolf_ hunt.”

 “This is not even _close_ to the most ridiculous thing you’ve done,” Clint pipes in over the comms. “You built the prototype Iron Man from scrap in a cave in the desert. And Banner says to remind you that you poked him with multiple sharp objects while on a helicarrier.”

 “You tried to fight Thor,” Captain Rogers contributes.

 “There was that whole flying-a-nuke-into-another-dimension thing,” adds Sam.

 “Guys, guys,” Stark says. “I get it, I’m a genius and you’re all in awe of me.”

 Allison’s phone beeps.

  **mccallmeemissary (8:24PM PST)** : Oh sweet, you’re out here too? I’m around with my pack – where exactly are you?

 “Allison,” Clint says warningly, no doubt watching the live feed from her vest camera as she types a response.

  **aardvark1016 (8:25PM PST)** : Clearing about a quarter mile due south of Lawrence Lake

 “Stop worrying,” she says. “I’m with Captain America, Falcon, the Black Widow, and Iron Man. I’m pretty sure we can take a computer nerd and a couple of his pet dogs.”

 Approximately two seconds later, the alleged computer nerd comes stumbling into their clearing. He’s grinning at first, looking around wildly, but his face abruptly turns eight shades of red when he seems to realize who he’s looking at.

 “Cap – Captain America,” he says. “You – you’re – _Iron Man_? Falcon? The Black Widow? Holy shit, holy _shit_.”

 “Relax, son,” Cap says, extending a hand. “You’re the one who’s been talking to Allison?”

 “Allison?” The guy shakes Cap’s hand extremely enthusiastically and cranes his head around, then goes very, very pale.

 “Allison?” He says again, taking a step closer and then goes stumbling back when Cap doesn’t let him go. Natasha moves to a defensive stance. “Sorry, sorry, I – Allison. Allison Argent.”

 “Yes,” Allison says, trying to ignore the war and noise in her head. Her right arm shakes without permission, and she un-nocks her arrow to be safe. Something is…something familiar. Maybe? “Who are you?”

 The guy has his cell phone out and is dancing a mad little circle in the space provided by Cap’s wingspan, jabbering. “C’mon, Scott, Scotty Scotty Scott, pick up pick up pick up pick up – _Scott_. Scott, you need to get here _right now_. Like, _right the fuck now_. Put on your fucking racing stripes and – oh, hey, great. Talk to you soon.” He pockets his phone but continues to bounce, sneaking glances at Allison every few seconds. The chatter doesn’t stop, either, and it’s hurting Allison’s head – not from volume or constancy, but it feels…right. “What are you, exactly? You can’t be a triva, because I see my mom when those pop up. A demon? I’m getting _really_ sick of demons. Is it another Fae trick?’ He peers at her closely, then suddenly stops moving altogether and looks like he might vomit. “Oh, _God_ , is this another nogitsune thing?”

 “Stop talking, Sparky,” Stark commands, leveling one of his blasters at the guy’s chest, and the silence that follows is just enough to let Allison’s brain make a connection.

 “Stiles,” she breathes, and the guy – Stiles – snaps his head up.

 “You know my name, cute,” he says sarcastically, more a sneer than anything else, and that _fits_ , that’s so _right_ , because this is _Stiles_ –

 Three shifted werewolves burst out of the trees behind Stiles, one of them skidding to a stop directly in front of him, and Allison ignores the array of noises her team makes at seeing werewolves in the flesh to throw her arms around his neck because, because, because

 “Scott,” she chokes, but then she’s staggering several steps backwards and hitting the ground.

 “What is she?” Scott asks, lisping slightly against elongated canines, and Allison can’t even be mad that he shoved her because he’s _Scott_ and he’s _here_ and she’s Allison Argent and she finally, _finally_ knows what that means.

 “I was hoping you could use your sniffer to figure that one out,” Stiles says, and Allison has the presence of mind to recognize Derek and – is that Malia? the coyote? what’s she doing here? – standing on either side of him and Cap, growling.

 Scott takes a deep breath in (“No shit, he’s actually smelling,” Sam says, sounding amazed) and abruptly shifts back to full human. “She smells like Allison. Our Allison. Human.”

 “I am,” she says, scrambling to her feet. “I am, I swear.”

 Scott stares at her, uncertainty written all over his crooked-jaw features. “Prove it. Tell me something only Allison would know.”

 Stiles and Stark groan at the exact same time.

 “Dude,” Stiles says, still struggling to get his hand out of Cap’s. “That’s seriously such a cliché.”

 “This is not a Nicholas Sparks novel,” Stark adds, flipping back his faceplate to look at Stiles appreciatively.

 Allison wracks her brain – a tricky task, since it’s 17 years fuller that it has been in the past five months. There’s a nasty headache gathering speed at the back of her skull. “I died.”

 “ _Literally_ everyone knows that,” Stiles snarks. “Ow! Ease up on the kung-fu grip, Cap’n. Jesus.”

 “Allison, your vitals are spiking,” Dr. Banner says quietly in her ear. She barely hears him, brain flooding with memories of Scott and Stiles and Isaac and her _dad_ and Lydia and her mom, but the Avengers react quickly, Cap finally releasing Stiles and everyone crowding around her.

 “Stop, stop, I’m fine,” Allison protests, batting their hands away and ignoring how short of breath she is. “I’m fine – Scott. Scott, you were holding me when I died. I told you that I loved you, that I’d always love you.”

 Someone back at base makes a strangled noise that sends feedback through the comms.

 “ _Allison_ ,” Scott says, rushing forward. Allison tries to get to him, but her knee buckles and the second step never lands and she’s looking up at the dusky sky through over the treeline and

  

[19]

 “She’ll be fine,” Natasha says when she finds him at Allison’s bedside. “Bruce and Jemma Simmons actually agreed on something for once. She’ll recover.”

 “They said she’d recover physically,” Clint says, holding one of Allison’s hands tightly between his own. Their calluses snag in a way that should probably be gross. “They also said we won’t know her mental state until she wakes up.”

 Natasha settles in to the other chair in the room and kicks her heels up onto his knee. “Have you heard the stories Stilinski and McCall have been telling Coulson and Stark about what they did in high school? That wasn’t even the first time Allison died – something about voluntary drowning to save their parents from a druid. A _druid_. We weren’t trained for this, but Allison was. She’ll be fine.”

 Clint lets out a shuddering breath. “I passed all my Psych evals while you guys were in the field. I’m cleared for active duty.”

 “Congratulations.”

 “Yeah,” Clint says, squeezing Allison’s hand tighter. “I guess.”

  

[20]

 “Dude,” Stiles says, throwing himself into the cafeteria seat across from Scott. “ _Dude_. Tony Stark offered me a job.”

 Scott almost chokes on his pizza. It’s funny – turns out cafeteria food is cafeteria food is cafeteria food, even if you’re at SHIELD headquarters. “ _What_?”

 “Technically a summer internship,” Stiles says. He tears open a bag of pretzels and sends half of them flying. “But _dude_. Me. At Stark Industries.”

 “That’s awesome!” Scott says, offering up his fist for a bump. “Dr. Banner said that he and Jane Foster want to talk to Lydia, too.”

 “Unbelievable,” Stiles says. “Un-fucking-believable. Hey, wait – didn’t you have a meeting with Director Coulson this morning?”

 Scott nods. “He, uh, wants to know if me and Derek are interested in heading up a SHIELD lycanthrope unit?

 It’s Stiles’ turn to choke. “You and Sourwolf are going to do _what_ now?”

 Scott pushes his tray aside and drops his forehead to the table. “He said a lot of things about protocols and hierarchies and needing to understand international pack relations.”

 “Dude,” Stiles says, looking at him like he’s lost his mind. “Why are you not as excited about this as I am?”

 “I _am_ excited,” Scott says. “No, really, I am. It’s just…a lot. And Allison, I still can’t…you know?”

 Stiles sobers. “Yeah. I’m having trouble getting used to that, but I spent the last two years feeling responsible for her death. It’s all kind of a relief for me.”

  

[21]

 “Before you say anything,” Phil says when Steve, Tony, and Clint all storm into his office, but he’s immediately overridden.

 “We’re not HYDRA,” Steve says firmly. “We’re not going to let you do to Allison what they did to Bucky.”

 “We need her magical and wolfy friends to like us,” Tony adds, picking up all the knick-knacks on Phil’s desk and reordering them. “Freezing her is not going to make them cooperative. They say they have a _banshee_. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to piss a banshee off.”

 “I’m not sure what I’d have to do to get designated unstable by Psych again,” Clint says. “But I’ll figure it out and I’ll do it, Coulson, I swear to Thor.”

 Phil calmly waits for all of them to vent a little while longer, using the time to rethink the strategy for May and Skye’s next mission. When the hubbub quells a little, he says, “What I was _going_ to say is that we are permanently scrapping the idea of putting Miss Argent in stasis.”

 “Oh,” says Steve. “Good, then.”

 “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” Tony says, narrowing his eyes. “The drama of that moment. You enjoyed that.”

 Clint just nods and leaves.

  

[22]

 Scott’s in the chair next to her bed when she wakes up, fiddling with something in his hands.

 “Hey,” she says, the words dragging sandpaper through her throat. “You’re here.”

 “You’re alive,” Scott says. He smiles with tears in his eyes. “I have to say, I didn’t see that one coming.”

 She laughs and sits up, happy to find that her body doesn’t hurt – she’s just raw, like someone hooked all her nerve endings to a car battery. Kate did that to Derek once. It’s kind of odd to have her head full of memories again. “Did anyone explain?”

 “Director Coulson made me and Stiles sit through a four hour debrief when we landed,” Scott says. “I’ve never seen Stiles hold still for that long. Alien voodoo, huh?”

 “Something like that.” She looks at him closely. She can he where he’s grown up – stubble more pronounced on his jaw, lines of his shoulders stronger than she remembered. “You doing okay with all of it?”

 Scott shrugs and smiles again. “If it means you’re alive, I’m okay with anything.” He hands her what he’s been toying with – a silver arrowhead. A familiar silver arrowhead.

 “This is…from the Oni?” She studies the Argent crest and runs her fingers along the edges, remembering how it felt to forge this herself. Remembers telling her dad that she’s proud of them. Remembers Lydia’s message, seeing Isaac go down, the cold and impossible pain of a blade in her chest.

 Scott nods. “You saved us with that. Your dad…it’s a long story.”

 Allison settles back against her pillows, gripping the arrowhead tightly. “I’ve got time.”

  

[23]

 “I called my dad.”

 Clint settles into their favorite blind – three stories up from the open workspace of Stark’s lab – next to her. “I heard. How’d it go?”

 “He didn’t believe me at first. Asked to talk to Scott, then to Coulson. He’s flying over from France tonight.”

 “That’s good.”

 “Yeah. I missed him. I didn’t know I missed him, but I missed him.” She turns so that her back is against a support pillar and signs, _I don’t know what to do._

 _About?_ Clint asks.

  _My dad. Scott. You. My entire life._

Below them, Stark sets something on fire and shouts in what’s either success or dismay.

  _I can’t tell you what to do_ , Clint signs. He wants to – _God_ , he wants to tell her to stay – but he can’t. If there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that you have to make your own decisions.

  _You could tell me to stay._ She moves across the small space and kisses him once, gently. He puts a hand on the back of her neck and pulls her down, settling her under his arm.

"Do you want me to stay?” She asks, after Tony puts the fire out.

 “Yes.”

 “Ask me to stay.”

 “No.”

 “I’d stay if you asked.”

 He kisses the top of her head. “I know.”

  

[24]

 “It’s really up to you,” Director Coulson says. “You didn’t apply or sign a contract. If you want to go back to your life in California, I’ll approve it. Your service record over the past six months has definitely made the investment in bringing you back worthwhile. You could go to college, settle down, have a normal life. We can help with the whole bringing-you-back-from-the-dead situation.”

 Allison fidgets with her bowstring. She’s been back on her feet for twelve hours (after having been unconscious fighting a 104-degree fever for six days while her brain sorted itself out), seen Scott and Stiles, seen Clint and Natasha and Cap and Dr. Banner and Sam and Stark, and she finally managed to escape absolutely everyone to come down to the shooting range – where Coulson found her. “And if I decide I’d rather stay?”

 “SHIELD Academy,” Coulson says. “Or, what’s serving as SHIELD Academy these days – it’s lots of one-on-one time and hands-on training. You’d probably test out of at least the first year.”

 Allison sets her feet, squares her shoulders, and draws, pressing her thumb to the hinge of her jaw. “You’d take me off the team?”

 “Until your training is complete. I really shouldn’t be sending non-agents into the field. The past six months were an extenuating circumstance.”

 She sights carefully, enjoying the burn in her shoulder from holding the draw for more than a few heartbeats. “You’d have to call me Agent Argent.”

 “We were actually thinking about calling you Silver Arrow.”

 Allison grins, breathes, and shoots.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Writing S&A is breaking my brain. This helped!


End file.
